Hulu Launches Private Beta, Surprisingly Little Excitement Ensues

Here at Searchles HQ, we just received our invitation to check out newfangled video site, Hulu.com – a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp. to host premium online video content from their popular TV shows and feature films. All the good content (read: Scrubs and The Office episodes…woo hoo) is indeed ready and available with tolerable pre-roll ad action, and Hulu does allow embeds and a primitive clipping functionality to customize your video sharing.

Otherwise? Nothing innovative, nothing earth-shattering, nothing user-generated – if I wanted broadcast television, I’d be working my Tivo. NBC and News Corp. have managed to create a platform for distribution of their TV shows online but they haven’t gone beyond that to create any sense of community or user involvement that will compete with YouTube. If a connected community of users isn’t what they’re after, why go through the trouble to create the destination site Hulu.com? Why not rely on partners like AOL and MSN to be channels for your content? That way, with minimal effort, they could still maintain the control over advertising that the Hulu platform offers.

On Hulu there’s really nothing to do aside from watch TV (kinda like your hometown right before you left for college). There’s a comment feature below a particular clip or episode, but where are the forums, discussion groups, pages where I can actually chat Weekend at Bernie’s with fellow fans and really connect to other viewers? Hulu users do have a “profile”, a playlist, and are able to view video history, but there are really too many barriers to interactivity to make Hulu a playground for former network TV viewers. Don’t get me wrong - the content is great, and the video quality is top notch compared to YouTube, but Hulu is going to have to take a turn towards focusing on the users in order to be any sort of competition for the other well-established video sites.

And because they do support embeds and we'd like to show Hulu at least a little love. Here's an SNL classic: